


Doomsday

by shaenie



Category: LOTR RPS
Genre: Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-06-25
Updated: 2004-06-25
Packaged: 2017-10-12 06:22:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/121797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shaenie/pseuds/shaenie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>For the cranky Princess, because occasionally when someone asks, I discover I can (and I'm always a little surprised). No beta. Toooooo laaaaaaaaaaaazy.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Doomsday

**Author's Note:**

> For the cranky Princess, because occasionally when someone asks, I discover I can (and I'm always a little surprised). No beta. Toooooo laaaaaaaaaaaazy.

Viggo's birthday always fills Elijah with a sense of impending doom.

What do you buy for someone who doesn't care -- really _honestly_ doesn't care, not just someone who says that -- about _stuff_?

You'd think after three or four such occasions, it would get easier, but you'd be wrong. It only gets harder every year.

It's not even that Viggo is difficult. He's not. Viggo is the easiest guy on the planet. Elijah could show up with the most unlikely gift imaginable -- ladies lingerie or lincoln logs or some shit -- and Viggo would look at it, turn it over and over in his hands with the patented Mortenson _look_ on his face (a look which is interested, thoughtful, intent, and possibly distantly amused all at once), and would eventually say something like, "Yeah, I can work with this," or maybe, "This is an interesting texture, I wonder if it'll hold paint," and whatever it was, you'd get the feeling he genuinely likes it, is happy to have it, is probably actually going to be able to find a way to _use_ it.

All of which only makes Elijah feel less competent than usual.

He doesn't want to get Viggo something that he has to use his incomprehensible brain to figure out a use for. He wants to give Viggo something for which the use is glaringly obvious, something that smashes the _look_ off of his face before it ever begins to blossom, leaving Viggo wide-eyed with _already knowing_ exactly what it's meant for.

It's one of the areas in which Elijah's money does him absolutely no good. Viggo has money, too -- not that you'd know it by looking at him, but he does -- and could easily buy himself anything that affected him like that, anything in which purpose was ingrained and essential.

"What are you so bloody worried about?" Dom asks him, frowning so that his jaw is even more crooked than usual. "You know he'll be happy with anything. Or nothing. What's your damage, Elwood?"

Elijah just shrugs helplessly. He doesn't know.

On doomsday itself, Elijah spends three hours wandering up and down Melrose, just looking, just feeling like he's waiting for karma or something to plop the perfect gift into his lap (conveniently disregarding that he's done it before, twice just last week, actually, and the boardwalk at Venice Beach a couple of times the week before), quietly certain that it will happen, because how can it not? Surely karma wouldn't be so cruel as to abandon him while he's trying to do something nice for a friend.

The third time he turns and starts to head back up the street, though, he starts to think maybe it would.

He stuffs his hands in his back pockets and scowls down at his shoes, barely even bothering to peer into shop windows.

It could all be moot, anyway, he tells himself. Maybe Viggo won't be home. It's his birthday, after all, and surely he has plans of some sort. Elijah knows he's in LA -- Dom is like the fellowship's keen-nosed tracking dog; if you want to know where one of them will be at any given time, you ask Dom, and Dom always knows, even that one time when Viggo had been in Japan and Elijah had been overwhelmed with the urge to call him at four in the morning, Dom had been able to provide a hotel name and a room number, albeit grumpily -- but that doesn't mean he's just sitting around his house, waiting for Elijah to show up with the perfect fucking birthday gift.

Of course not. That's just stupid, and so he probably has a little time to find _something_ , it's not like they always actually see each other on their exact birthday's anyway (although that's not precisely true, Elijah knows; he's never actually missed _Viggo's_ birthday, though he's missed a few others), and inexplicably, this line of reason is only serving to make Elijah crankier.

He sighs and keeps walking, because there's a coffee shop a couple of blocks up, and he figures he'll hit that before he goes home, and his car is just up the street from that, and apparently the only thing karma is helping him out with is getting coffee before he heads home in defeat.

"Stupid fucking karma," he snarls, wondering where Viggo is right now, what he's doing, and if maybe some of this aggravation could have been avoided by just _asking_ Viggo what he wanted for his birthday (but he never would have, it would be like cheating somehow), and he's still staring at his shoes on the cracked and pitted Los Angeles sidewalk when he angles toward the door of the coffe shop, so he practically runs over the guy lurking in the little inset alcove where the door is.

He looks up, unsure as to whether his tongue is going to offer an apology or an obscenity, and Viggo grins at him, reaching out to steady Elijah with both hands on Elijah's shoulders.

"Viggo," he says dumbly, and thinks, _I take it back, karma, and offer my humblest apologies._

"I saw your car," Viggo says, and points helpfully, but Elijah doesn't bother to follow his finger, since he knows where his car is parked. "And then I saw the coffee place." He points up, presumably at the sign above them, though neither of them can see it where they're standing.

"Why didn't you just wait by my car," Elijah asks, genuinely curious even though he doesn't really care that much.

Viggo shrugs, and Elijah sees that he's got a little plastic bag in one hand, black with pink writing. "Probability dictated that you'd come here first," he says. He's smiling.

"Predictable," Elijah says, but can't bring himself to feel sheepish about it.

"In a good way," Viggo says, and Elijah believes him.

"Want to grab something to eat?" he asks. "Thai, maybe?"

Viggo's face lights up, but he doesn't agree or disagree. Instead he hands Elijah the bag in his hand, and scrunches his face up. "It's a _mathom_ ," he says, and the scrunchy look fades, and Viggo is bright and intent again. "Let's go eat, I'm starving. Thai sounds perfect."

He doesn't give Elijah time to open the bag, but Elijah hardly notices. He's too wrapped up in Viggo's weird, low-grade energy.

Over Thai food, they talk about movies and music and New Zealand (a lot about New Zealand), and about how who they were has shaped who they are, the conversation ranging from the common to the philisophical so quickly and easily that it's hardly even noticable. The little plastic bag sits on the corner of the table until their dishes have been cleared, and even though Elijah is pretty sure it's a CD (between the size and shape and the bag, it's almost certain), he has no real curiosity as to what CD it might be.

"Aren't you going to open it," Viggo asks after awhile, and Elijah realizes that the conversation has lapsed without him noticing, and the two of them have been sitting there smoking and looking at each other without speaking for quite some time.

"Later," Elijah says, shrugging one shoulder. He is far more interested in talking to Viggo than what is in the little bag, even though they aren't talking, even though they're just sitting and smiling and smoking, he's more interested. "It's not going anywhere. This is more important."

"Of course," Viggo says, as though he'd known that all along, which he probably had.


End file.
